Recently
the city of Pittsburgh filed a lawsuit challenging the tax-exempt nonprofit
status of UPMC. This same act of courage must be initiated against the
University of Pittsburgh.

Would you want a university to impact your community the way the University
of Pittsburgh has impacted Oakland? This impact involves university administrators
taking ownership of 90 buildings in your community, building 8,000 dormitory
beds, increasing enrollment to 27,000 students, persuading state authorities
to invoke eminent domain thus evicting you and your neighbors from your
homes so that university buildings could be erected, giving your residential
organizations a paltry $23,000 a year in direct funding, and then have
them tell you to start a Neighborhood Improvement District to resolve
your problems such as litter, trash and binge drinking.

Our grassroots movement -- SOUL (South Oakland Urban Litter) -- will
continue, as will our efforts not to permit Pitt administrators to dictate
how we in our community are going to live. Our efforts are well documented
on the website www.oaklanddignity.com. We have once again called for the
resignation of Chancellor Mark Nordenberg in messages placed recently
in The Pitt News.

Members of the Pittsburgh City Council and the mayor will have to search
their own consciences as to what actions they should take to stop the
decimation and desecration of a once vibrant multicultural residential
community.